Letters to the Editor 6/13/2014

Editor: I would like to thank Scranton City Councilman Pat Rogan and all of

council for standing up for local musicians, restaurant

and bar owners.

Council passed an amendment to exempt local entertainment events with fewer than 500 people in attendance from paying an additional 5 percent amusement tax on top of entertainment license fees already paid to the city.

Mr. Rogan’s proposal became law only months after talking with local

musicians and restaurant owners about how this tax will hurt Scranton’s music scene as well as bars and restaurants in the city.

As a musician who frequently plays, eats and drinks in Scranton, it

is good to know that Scranton has a councilman in Mr. Rogan who takes the time to listen to the concerns of the people who are most affected by the city’s laws.

Thanks to Tom Graham for writing the original article that brought this issue to my attention and that of other musicians in the area. MIKE CAHILL

TUNKHANNOCK

Toomey talk cheap

Editor: When someone you know has been afflicted with Alzheimer’s disease, it can be absolutely devastating. It’s heartbreaking to try to communicate with a loved one or friend who might not remember who you are anymore.

While I thank Sen. Pat Toomey for tuning into this issue and sharing his thoughts in a recent Times-Tribune column, I also question his votes against funding for Alzheimer’s disease research. He might say he cares about the issue — and he truly might — but words can only go so far. Funding is needed and the senator, unfortunately, has voted against it time and again.

More than 5 million Americans have the disease, including 400,000 Pennsylvanians. And if Toomey continues to vote against funding for this disease, it will prevent people from getting the care they need. Consider this: the number of elderly Americans with Alzheimer’s disease is expected to triple to 16 million in 2050, according to the Alzheimer’s Association.

Disappointingly, Toomey voted against nearly $600 million in funding in this year’s National Institutes of Health budget. The budget included an “unprecedented” $122 million increase this year, according to the Alzheimer’s Association, which included money to train health professionals on how to better detect Alzheimer’s disease and funds for prevention, education and outreach efforts.

Toomey also voted against $500 million in Alzheimer’s disease research funding in the NIH budgets in 2012 and 2013. His votes opposing NIH funding include programs under the National Institute of Aging, which include over 40 projects that are part of the Alzheimer’s disease Transitional and Drug Discovery Initiative. Those projects include clinical trials for programs that will help people with Alzheimer’s disease, such as insulin that attempts to delay memory loss.

He also has voted against $1 million in funding in recent years that goes toward the Department of Justice’s Missing Alzheimer’s Disease Patient Alert Program, which helps law-enforcement officials develop plans to locate people with Alzheimer’s disease who may have wandered off in their communities.

Toomey also has voted 30 times to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, which provides free Alzheimer’s disease screenings for senior citizens. The ACA saved senior citizens about $120 million for anti-dementia drugs in 2012. The health care law also established an Innovation Center at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services that helps coordinate services for people who are suffering from cognitive impairment.

While it’s true Toomey has discussed his plans to introduce a bill that would raise money for Alzheimer’s disease through a charity stamp, his bill would only raise about $5 million a year, which is nothing compared to the $500 million in the NIH budget he has voted against in recent years.

Words only mean so much, and it’s votes that will make a difference. I hope Toomey starts voting in ways that will actually help people with Alzheimer’s disease instead of harming them.

GERRIE CAREY

CLARKS SUMMIT

Not tough choice

Editor: Let’s say you have two choices. You can keep taxes artificially low for the gas industry by letting our roads and bridges decay and by cutting funding for our children’s education, or you can levy a severance tax on the gas industry and fix our roads and bridges and reinstate our commitment to education.

So, help the gas industry get even richer and our cars be ruined and our kids fall behind, or the opposite.

Which do you choose? And don’t claim the gas industry would pull out of Pennsylvania, because that’s absurd.

ED COLE

CLARKS SUMMIT

New Gilded Age

Editor: A recent letter claiming that President George W. Bush “as president went out of his way to move the GOP to the center” is not just laughable. It is patently incorrect.

William Speare disproves his own claim by stating President Bush “was even willing to compromise with the liberal wing of the Democratic Party to pass his legislative agenda.”

That is absurd. Researching party affiliation in Congress for the Bush 43 presidency shows the Senate, in the four congressional terms held during his presidency, controlled by his party for two of the four terms. There were 51 Republican senators in term 108, increasing to 55 in the next. During the other two terms, 107 and 110, neither party held a majority.

The House alignment is even starker. There Mr. Bush’s party held the majority from 2001 to 2007 — three consecutive terms. His party lost its dominance in 2006 due to the catastrophic consequences of his six-year conservative regime.

As for a “moderate party,” no administration that lies its people into an unjust war, that strives to implement torture as a national practice and gives tax cuts to those Americans with the most wealth can claim that title.

Mr. Speare’s claims that over the “last five or six years the Republican Party has become more conservative” is close. It has not simply become more conservative. It has moved to the very fringe of the far right. It is now the party of right-wing political reaction.

A party trying to turn the clock back on middle class American rights, voting, women and workers.

In reality it has become a party of right-wing reactionaries seeking to return the United States to an earlier outmoded society, that of the Gilded Age.

GIRARD HISTED

ARCHBALD

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